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Ask HN: What are your favorite sayings?
Do you have any favorite sayings or quotes that you live by?
My father use to say "You do not always have to know the answer, just understand the question"
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - Blade Runner
- hvass 10y ago"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." Marcus Aurelius (from his Meditations)
- Mendenhall 10y agoI enjoyed his meditations. If you have never read "Art of worldly wisdom" I think you would enjoy. Short maxims like Marcus and its free on google books.
- dahdum 10y agoI'm fond of this one from him: "Soon you’ll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial." Macrus Aurelius
- grif-fin 10y ago"Let us not be afraid of vision and hope. It was the daring of visionaries that has brought us this far — from gloomy primordial marshes to where we are today — reaching for the galaxies, reaching for immortality." F.M 2030 - Up-Wingers
- osullivj 10y ago"Consistency is the virtue of a narrow mind" (Emerson; my take - new evidence requires new thinking). "No entity without identity" (Quine). "Listen to the system" (me, when debugging & reminding self to actually read error msgs instead of making assumptions). "No good deed goes unpunished" (trad, but my take on corporate politics). "Res ipsa loquitor" (Hunter S Thompson; the thing speaks for itself). "Nimium non sufficaret" (me on a pub crawl - too much is not enough!)...
- orky56 10y agoIn the book Santaram by Gregory David Roberts there's a quote that provides a different perspective to "No good deed goes unpunished". It says "Every virtuous act has some Dark secret in its heart; every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved."
- osullivj 10y agoNice angle. Yes - motivations, consequences and the apparent and underlying connections between them often confound. Especially if you take things at face value!
- rajeshmr 10y ago"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." - Jim Rohn
- Nicholas_C 10y ago"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
- orky56 10y ago"It is better to be hated for what you are then to be loved for what you are not." Andrew Gide "People think it is holding on that makes you stronger, but sometimes it's letting go." Herman Hesse "Action expresses priorities." Gandhi
- mbrock 10y ago"When there is unclarity in the immediate situation it is generally because the opinionated mind is grasping and rejecting." — Zen Master Foyan "Just do what's in front of your nose." — Henry Miller
- yolesaber 10y agoMy father did quite well for himself early in my life. He started out selling car alarms and then found himself in a different sales business but it really took off. When I was 9 we moved from the modest and kinda rundown yet nonetheless charming ranch house in a subdivision to a massive mansion on the cliffs overlooking the ocean thirty minutes away from all my former friends and family (in an area where a car was necessary). We had a private beach. I had my own duplex room in a turret with a wraparound view. And yet we moved out of there three years later because we were all unhappy and missed our old friends and just a simpler life. I talked to my dad about this a few years later, asking if he had any regrets or reservations about giving up on his dream of a beachside mansion (Something he had talked about for as long I can remember). I'll never forget what he said to me then and I oft remind myself of it. He said to me, "Sometimes our dreams are the wrong dreams."
- Nors 10y agoThanks for sharing this. I'm currently struggling with life decisions that stem from conflicts between pursuing long term dreams that have become achievable versus the real value of actually achieving them.
- max_ 10y ago>"Action expresses priorities." Gandhi
- bbcbasic 10y agoDid he "chase" the dream to make so much money in the first place. I.e. sacrifice relationships with friends and family etc due to a big desire for those trappings?
- yolesaber 10y agoHmm, not so much sacrificing relationships as it was marginalizing them. He wasn't a bad father - on the contrary, a great one - but a bit disconnected from our needs. So yes, I would say he got caught up in the chase. Must run in the family.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThey thought a king would make them free. - Terry Pratchett I'm not afraid of failure; I'm afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter. - William Carey You can pick your sins, but you can't pick the consequences. - Darryl Strawberry
- NumberCruncher 10y agoTo forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experiences. /Arthur Schopenhauer/ People change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves [...] are deceiving themselves, because they afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse. /Machiavelli/ Every shitty product finds its shitty consumer. /my dad/
- csallen 10y ago"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other." --Benjamin Franklin Basically, he's saying that while learning from your own mistakes is impactful, it's smarter to read/watch/listen so you can learn from others' mistakes instead. I think it's one of the wisest sayings, because people who haven't internalized this lesson are largely incapable of heeding any other advice anyway.
- 7402 10y ago"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
- saturdayplace 10y agoWe are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle
- wmeredith 10y agoThere aren't many right or wrong decisions in life. You make a decision and then work really hard ensuring it was the right one. -My Mom
- pasbesoin 10y agoTANSTAAFL
- japhyr 10y agoWork hard. Be strong. Don't complain. I was climbing in the desert with a friend once, and we headed out to a Thai restaurant in a small town for dinner afterwards. He reached for his wallet after dinner and a small paper with those words on it fell onto the table. I asked him about it, and he said that was the advice his grandfather always gave him. Those words are now posted on my classroom door.
- GFischer 10y agoI think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right. Cato the Elder I like this quote because it reminds me not to argue needlesly. See yesterday's submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483952 and and this quote from Dale Carnegie: Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save face? He didn't ask for your opinion. He didn't want it. Why argue with him? You can't win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his judgment, and his self-respect, and he'll resent your triumph. That will make him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. --Dale Carnegie
- rayalez 10y ago“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” ― Niccolò Machiavelli “To hell with your cancer. I’ve been living with cancer for the better part of a year. Right from the start, it’s a death sentence. That’s what they keep telling me. Well, guess what? Every life comes with a death sentence. So every few months I come in here for my regular scan, knowing full well that one of these times – hell, maybe even today – I’m gonna hear some bad news. But until then, who’s in charge? Me. That’s how I live my life.” – Walter White “You ask me if an ordinary person by studying hard would get to be able to imagine these things like I imagine. Of course! I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There is no miracle people." – Richard Feynman
- dhruvkar 10y agoA master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. - François-René de Chateaubriand I think that the so-called "work/life balance" is different for different people at different stages of life. This quote reminds me to pursue my vision of excellence as guided by my stage in life.
- fern12 10y agoIf you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the moment. -Lao Tzu Forget injuries, never forget kindness. -Confucius Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something. —H. Jackson Brown Jr. The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. —Winston Churchill Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. —Stephen Hawking The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all. —Mulan I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying. —Michael Jordan
- ch215 10y agoThe opening of the Dhammapada sticks in my mind: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
- personlurking 10y agoSimple, but... Energy flows where attention goes
- rajeshmr 10y ago"Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed." - Wayne Dyer